


A Long Way From Home

by revanchistsuperstar



Series: The Stardust Legacy [6]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Exposition, Pining, Short One Shot, Vignette, sith pureblood jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 11:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17807339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revanchistsuperstar/pseuds/revanchistsuperstar
Summary: Following a particularly tense meeting with the Jedi Council concerning her dark past, Padawan Kira Carsen is frustrated by the suspicions of some of the council members and takes to her quarters to brood. Her Master, Quodazhae Stardust, does his best to cheer her up, but is frustratingly oblivious to some of his Padawan's more confusing feelings.





	A Long Way From Home

**Author's Note:**

> So here's a little story introducing another character in my legacy, Quodazhae, my pureblood Sith who also happens to be a Jedi knight!  
> He's Ixaleii's adopted brother, and I have been wanting to write him into her story for a while instead of just having him live in my head canon for the Stardust Legacy, so here's his introduction! It explains a little bit of where he came from and how he ended up with a human smuggler for a sister, and also how he even became a Jedi in the first place. The idea of a Sith being a Jedi has just always been fascinating to me, and I almost wish the Jedi knight dialogue in game wasn't so race blind, because there's some interesting potential there.  
> I wrote this a while ago, but just recently cleaned it up enough to post. Takes place shortly after Kira reveals that she is a Child of the Emperor.  
> I'm working on a bit of a longer fic with a reunion between Quodazhae and Ixaleii on Ossus, but it might be some time before I get it published.  
> Enjoy!

“I was born on Ziost, you know.”

Kira jumped slightly. She hadn’t heard, or even sensed anyone approaching, but there he was at the threshold of her quarters. Her master, Quodazhae.

“……I figured it was probably something like that, but I didn’t want to pry,” she replied, looking back to the computer spike she was tinkering with. She liked technology. It helped her focus her mind when meditation proved too bothersome.

Her Master was a Sith, which would probably never stop being disconcerting. Not a member of the Sith Empire, but the species, a pure-blooded Sith, replete with red skin, bony protrusions along his brows and a few spare tendrils along his jawline. And his eyes… they were red, blood red, and the irises almost seemed to glow.

All of this was completely at odds with Quodazhae’s overall demeanor and position within the Jedi order. His eyes were always so kind, even in spite of their alarming color, and his voice was warm and comforting, without the smallest trace of any sort of Imperial accent. And he was a Jedi Knight, an incredibly virtuous one at that. He was nothing like any of the cruel and domineering members of his species Kira had been forced to have for teachers when at the academy on Korriban, and it was truly unusual to even see anyone of his species outside the Empire at all. If she was being honest Kira had been wanting to ask her Master more about it, but doing so would have brought up topics she wasn’t overly eager to discuss.

Like the fact that she, Kira Carsen, had once been a Sith too.

Politically. Not the species.

‘That’s probably why he wants to talk about it now,’ she mused. Kira’s dark past had finally come to light during their travels, the fact that she had once been a “Child of the Emperor,” born on Dromund Kaas to Sith parents. But Kira had made the choice when she was just a child, she was never going back. She thought maybe after joining the Jedi, that would have been the end of it, but it looked like the Force had other plans for her.

Like this awkward conversation with her Master.

He was approaching her now, sitting across from her at the table where she had her technological bits and bobs strewn about in a chaos only she saw as order. She still didn’t meet his eyes, but she didn’t ask him to leave either.

“You just seem kind of seem upset by what the Council said still, so I thought I’d tell you about it.”

Kira frowned, and bit her lip, still refusing to look up.

“……It  wasn’t the Council so much as… Well Master Kaeden. He just was so against me. He doesn’t even know me!” Sparks flew off her computer spike, causing Kira to drop it, cursing. She must have soldered something sensitive. She closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing. _There is no emotion…_

Suddenly, she felt the warmth of hands on her shoulders, causing her to open her eyes. Quodazhae was leaning over the table, looking at her with such concern and warmth, it almost made her blush.

This was the part of their relationship as Master and Padawan that was so confusing. The Council has given Quodazhae the role of teacher, but he wasn’t much more than a year or two her senior, and they were just so, so close. Sometimes it made Kira slightly resentful of the Jedi Code and how strictly romantic attachments were forbidden. She saw the way he looked at her sometimes, heard the things he let slip during times of stress. When he’d rescued her from Darth Angral’s lackeys, he’d told them that his desire to save her wasn’t out of duty, that it was personal. And Kira had been left to wonder ever since just how personal. Because he understood her. More than anyone seemed to be equipped to. She frowned at him, knowing that he expected her to continue speaking.

“I’m sorry, Master, I just don’t like being suspected like that. I didn’t do anything! I can’t help where I was born!”

“I know,” he said simply, causing Kira to deflate a bit. Of course he knew. That was the whole point of this. He sat back down, and Kira mirrored the movement.

“So… uh… Ziost, huh.”

“Ziost,”’he repeated with an amused smile.

“Tell me more then, Master.”

“I don’t remember much of it, just what I was told. I was very young when I left.” Quodazhae’s eyes became far away as he reminisced. “I remember my mother. She was a servant to my father, a powerful Sith Lord. She was also so terrified he would discover me. I didn’t understand why then. I do now.”

Kira grimaced. She understood as well. A young Pureblood as strong in the Force as Quodazhae would have been viewed as only two things: a tool, or a threat. If his Sith Lord father had decided he was the latter, he probably would have had him killed.

“How did you end up in the Republic?”

“A smuggler named Corran Stardust. He used to take shipments of stims to the Imperial officers. Was informing for the SIS the whole time,” Quodazhae said, smiling. “My mother met him on Ziost, when she found out he was from Corellia, she begged him to take us. I wasn’t even three at the time, but I still remember the trip. He flew an old XS freighter, I thought it was the most spectacular ship I’d ever seen…” He paused to laugh. “We lived with his family on Corellia for a time, before the Jedi found me and took me for training. He had a wife, Breha, and two daughters, Jykaji and Ixaleii. The three of us used to play together, they were like sisters to me. Even back then, though… Some of the other children feared me. It hurt.”

“How did the Jedi find you?” Kira asked, now fully engaged in the story. Her Master laughed again.

“Fairly easily, it was war, I lived in the Core Worlds and I was a Sith. The Jedi needed as many recruits as they could find, and stories about me had spread pretty far. I was lucky though, the war had very little effect on my training. I wasn’t anywhere near Coruscant when… When the temple fell. My teachers kept me apart from the other younglings.”

“Why?”she asked, and Quodazhae’s smile became somewhat wistful.

“They told me it was because the other children might not understand me,” he said. “But after a while, I came to learn that it was less about that, and more about keeping a close eye on me, in case my… Sith nature were to become a problem. It never did though.”

“And now you’re one of the best in the Order,” Kira said, slightly awed. Quodazhae laughed.

“That’s hardly true. I still have a long way to be the equal of any of the Masters. I have my flaws and my struggles the same as you do, Kira.”

“……Maybe I should ask for a different Master then,” she joked, and the incandescent smile she received from him made he heart soar for a second.

“What, and leave me bored out of my mind?” he joked right back, grinning. Kira smiled. Whoever decided it was fair for such a talented Jedi to be so attractive and charming had been a cruel person indeed. Their eyes met, and they both started for a few seconds. Kira swallowed, feeling slightly nervous as she watched her Master’s smile fade into a slightly more austere expression. “In all seriousness, Kira, you’re very dear to me, and I hope you won’t pay your doubters on the Council much mind. They don’t know you like I do. It doesn’t matter where or who you were born to.”

“Thank you, Master,” she said, not looking away from his eyes. Their gaze was so intense. “It means a lot.”

He smiled again, then rose. Kira’s breath hitched slightly as he suddenly reached out to gently touch her face. She leaned into his touch more than she knew she was supposed to, heart beating faster and faster. All she would have to do is pull his face in closer to hers and then-

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he said kindly, dropping his hand from her face and going to leave her quarters.

Kira sat there, slightly dazed, and on the whole unsure how to react. She reached up to touch her own face, where Quodazhae’s hand had just been. She could still feel the warmth from his fingers.

Someday she would find the courage to ask her Master directly about his feelings for her. But for now, it seemed that conversation was going to wait just one day more.


End file.
